Silver screen sweethearts featured at Allison-Antrim

February 11, 2005

GREENCASTLE, Pa. - "Sweethearts of the Silver Screen," an exhibit showing a half-century of the great movie stars of Hollywood's golden age, will be on display Sunday through Thursday at the Allison-Antrim Museum.

The exhibit also features brief histories of local theaters in Greencastle and Waynesboro, Pa., said Bonnie A. Shockey, president of the museum at 365 S. Ridge Ave.

"During the last couple of years many of the truly great film stars of the golden age of movies have died," Shockey said in a press release announcing the exhibit. "It will be based on half a century of these great leading actresses and actors of the silver screen and will include biographies on many of the greatest stars of our time from the 1920s through the 1970s."

The exhibit will include lobby cards, articles about individual stars, movie scene stills, photographs including original studio shots, and a special display on early Academy Awards. The first Oscars were presented in the 1920s.

Visitors will learn about Mary Pickford, Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow and Mae West, among Hollywood's earliest stars.

They will see special displays on favorites of the 1930s, '40s and '50s, stars like Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, Lauren Bacall, Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis, Judy Garland, James Dean, Jean Harlow, Montgomery Clift, and Natalie Wood, among others.

Two Greencastle theaters, the Gem and the State, will be seen through photographs. Also on exhibit will be glass slide advertisements for Charles W. Martin, 63 N. Allison St., who sold concentrated food flavorings, and Carl's Drug Store. The ads were shown on the movie screen through a special projector.

A photo exhibit of Waynesboro's Arcade Theatre will be featured along with a print of Waynesboro artist Landis Whitsel's painting entitled "Saturday Night at the Movies - the Arcade Theatre, Circa 1938."

The Arcade, which boasted of having the largest stage east of the Mississippi when it was built in 1916, was demolished in 1966.

A photograph of Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh in a scene from "Gone with the Wind" will be given away to one visitor whose name is drawn from a box Sunday afternoon.

The museum will play movies starring Bette Davis.

The exhibit runs Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. and Monday through Thursday from noon to 3 p.m. and by appointment.

Admission is free.

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